The nymphaeum (dating from the first half of the first century AD) was originally discovered in 1959 when Professor Lamboglia, founder of the centre for underwater archaeology, initiated a study on board the ship Daino to determine the morphology of a complete architectonic discovery at the base of Epitaffio Point.

Ten years later two marble statues were discovered still standing in the apse of a rectangular building. They have been acknowledged as being Homeric personifications showing the scene of the intoxication of Polyphemus as viewed by Odysseus and his companions; Odysseus offering a wine goblet to the cyclops.

Of five further statues the most beautiful and least damaged is of Dionysus when he was young. Another has been identified as being Antonia Minor, the mother of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus - indeed, it appeared to be a gallery of sorts within the imperial residence depicting the Claudian dynasty. This, combined with the architecture of the room and the presence of plumbing to control the flow of water allow the ruins to be identified as a luxurious nymphaeum.

There is also a permanent exhibition of the nymphaeum in the Pincer Tower of the Aragonese castle in Baia.

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The Ancient Coastline

“… I made myself a raspberry milkshake and heated it up in the microwave and then went through to the living room to watch one of my Blue Planet videos about life in the ocean.

The video was about the sea creatures who live around sulphur chimneys, which are underwater volcanoes where gases are ejected from the earth’s crust into the water. Scientists never expected there to be any living organisms there because it was so hot and so poisonous, but there are whole ecosystems there.

I like this bit because it shows you that there is always something new that science can discover, and all the facts that you take for granted can be completely wrong. ...”

- Christopher Boone (a fifteen year old with Asperger’s Syndrome) in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

“He devised a novel and unheard of kind of pageant; for he bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, afterwards a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of 'Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days... know that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration by bridging the much narrower Hellespont; others, that it was to inspire fear in Germany and Britain, on which he had gardens, by the fame of some stupendous work. But when I was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor's confidential courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.”